71 Interesting Facts About Pakistan

With these 71 facts about Pakistan, let us learn about its history, culture, geography, noted people, food, inventions, mountains, mosques, family customs and hospitality, and much more. Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is the 6th most populous country in the world. It has an area of 796,095 sq km. It is a country in South Asia and has 4 provinces (Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh). Islamabad is the country’s capital and Karachi is its largest city. Both Urdu and English are its official languages. Urdu is also its national language. The Pakistani rupee (PKR) is its official currency. The citizen of Pakistan is called a Pakistani (singular) or Pakistanis (plural). Its four bordering countries are India, Afghanistan, Iran, and China.

1. Sialkot, located in Pakistan, is the world’s largest producer of handsewn footballs. Local factories in the region produce 40-60 million footballs a year, which is roughly 50-70% of the world’s total production. The football manufacturing industry now consists of more than 200 factories.

Leather classic football ball

2. Pakistan is the world’s first Islamic country to attain nuclear power.

3. Pakistan has the highest paved international road – The Karakoram Highway (KKH).

4. Pakistan has the largest canal-based irrigation system in the world.

5. Pakistan has the world’s largest ambulance network. Pakistan’s Edhi Foundation, which is also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, operates the network.

6. The highest batting partnership formed by two players playing in their first Test matches in the sport of Cricket is 249 runs by Khalid Ibadulla (b. 20 December 1935) and Abdul Kadir (b. 1944, d. 2002) for Pakistan against Australia in Karachi, Pakistan, in the match played 24-29 October 1964. Wasim Akram, a former Pakistani fast bowler is the first to take 400 wickets in both Tests and ODIs (second being Muttiah Muralitharan).

7. Pakistan’s estimated population was 207,774,520 in August 2017, making it the world’s sixth-most-populous country, behind Brazil and ahead of Nigeria.

8. The name Pakistan means ‘land of the pure’ in Persian and Urdu.

9. Just two people have won the Nobel Prize from Pakistan. Malala Yousafzai for Peace in 2014 and Abdus Salam for Physics in 1979.

Malaya Yousafzai – defied the Taliban in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012, but survived and went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

10. Pakistan boasts the world’s highest ATM (automated teller machine). The ATM is operated by the National Bank of Pakistan and it is installed at a height of 16,007 feet above sea level, at the Pak-China border, Khunjerab Pass.

11. Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan, is its financial hub as well as home to almost 17 million people. It also has a major seaport. Karachi was the first capital city of Pakistan post-independence and remained so until the capital was shifted to Rawalpindi in 1958.

12.India and Pakistan got their independence at midnight of 14–15 August 1947. The Indian Independence Act states – “As from the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, two independent Dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan.”

Flag of Pakistan

The national flag of Pakistan. Green with a vertical white band (symbolizing the role of religious minorities) on the hoist side; a large white crescent and star are centered in the green field; the crescent, star, and color green are traditional symbols of Islam. Image credit – Wikipedia.org

14. Sugarcane juice is the national drink of Pakistan. In Pakistan, it is also known as “roh.”

Sugarcane Juice extracting machine.

15. Pakistan levies 5% advance tax on annual expenses made related to education, however, only when the total expense is above Rs 200,000 during a year.

16. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was founded on 23 October 1946 as Orient Airways. The airline was nationalized on January 10th, 1955. The airline has a world record for flying the fastest between London and Karachi. The airline achieved this feat in 1962 when they completed the flight in 6 hours, 43 minutes, 55 seconds, a record which remains unbroken to this day.

A PIA (Pakistan International Airlines) A 320 painted in the anniversary retro livery is taxing to the gate after arrival from Pakistan, Peshawar, as seen on December 5, 2015.

17. K-2 (Chagori) is the highest mountain peak in Pakistan and the second highest in the world.

Famous Mountain peaks of Pakistan, their total height, and world ratings.

18. Pakistan also has one of the oldest civilizations in history, Mehrgarh, dating back to 6000 B.C. Mehrgarh is now seen as a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization. It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia.

19. They also have a rare species of ‘Blind Dolphin’ found in the water of Indus River. It is the second most endangered freshwater dolphin species in the world, the first being the ‘functionally extinct’ Yangtze River dolphin.

20. Pakistan also made history with the youngest civil judge in the world. Mohammed Ilyas passed the exam when he was 20 years and 9 months old and thus became the youngest civil judge in the world.

23. Pakistan has the eleventh-largest armed forcein the world. It has 617,000 people in its army. UN peacekeeping missions are supported largely by the Pakistani army.

24. According to a survey, Pakistan has one of the world’s top national anthem tunes. The duration of Pakistan’s National Anthem is 80 seconds.

25. Pakistanis are the fourth-most intelligent people in the world, according to poll results gathered from 125 countries by the Institute of European Business Administration.

26. The world’s seventh-largest collection of scientists and engineers is from Pakistan.

27. The world’s longest glacial system outside the polar regions – the Biafo Glacier – is in Pakistan.

28. The largest earth-filled dam in the world (and fifth largest by structural volume) is the ‘Tarbela Dam’ on the Indus river in Pakistan. The dam was built in 1968 and 1976. The dam is 143.26 meters high and 2,743.2 meters long.

29. Out of the total land area in Pakistan, 25% is under agricultural cultivation. Pakistan irrigates three times more land area than Russia.

Pakistan on the map

30. The once world’s largest man-made forest is in Pakistan – the Changa Manga forest (12,423 acres in area). It is named after two brother dacoits, the Changa Manga forest was originally planted in 1866 by British foresters.

31. Pakistan is also blessed with Jahangir Khan, a former World No. 1 professional squash player. Between 1981 and 1986, he won 555 matches consecutively (the longest winning streak by any athlete in top-level professional sports as recorded by Guinness World Records).

32. Islamabad, Pakistan is ranked the second most beautiful capital in the world.

33. For the passenger trains in Pakistan, the railway uses, 5 ft 6 in wide gauge, the size of a broad track gauge which is also commonly used in India, west of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Chile. Elsewhere it is known as “Indian gauge”. It is the widest gauge in regular passenger use anywhere in the world.

34. Pakistan has some of the best-trained air force pilots in the world.

35. The Shah Faisal Mosque in Pakistan can accommodate 100,000 worshipers at a time. It was the largest mosque in the world from 1986 until 1993.

The Shah Faisal Mosque, Islamabad, Pakistan. It is named after Saudi King Faisal, who provided a $120 million grant for the construction of the mosque in 1976. Image credit – Wikipedia.org

36.MM Alam, late Air Commodore from Pakistan, is known to have shot five planes in less than a minute during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

37. Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, has a population of 2,006,572 (2017). Islamabad officially became the capital of Pakistan on 14 August 1967, exactly 20 years after the country’s independence.

38. Pakistan is so far the only nation in the world to get established on the basis of ‘Religion’.